


Chasing the Abstract

by strawberrymarss



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hongjoong's Dream, Mental Health Issues, Mingi's Diary, Morbid thoughts, Slice of Life, Slight Questioning of Religious Values, Slight gore and violence, Sort Of, Storyline Event Competition 2020, The Man With the Black Fedora - Freeform, Yeosang's Time, i think, kind of, there's no actual relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25221943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberrymarss/pseuds/strawberrymarss
Summary: Yeosang struggles to feel human with the void in him, Mingi is used to being dreamless, until Hongjoong comes along.The man with the fedora merely watches, observing for when is right for him to step in.( Entry for ATEEZ Storyline Event, posted to AO3)
Relationships: Everyone & Everyone, Kim Hongjoong & Song Mingi
Kudos: 10





	Chasing the Abstract

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there, this was my submission for the ATEEZ Storyline Event which took place some days ago ! I didn't win, unfortunately, but I thought I wanted to post this here just for fun :D
> 
> I have no idea how to tag these honestly so be careful as you read <3 Nothing too heavy though
> 
> Content Warning: The content below contains the description of morbid thoughts and also contains slight questioning of religious values. There may also be sensitive content (e.g.: mentions of death, mental issues, slight mentions of gore, etc.) the author accidentally overlooked and didn’t add to the warning, thus please be careful as you read.

1\. **Yeosang**

Kang Yeosang is human, he definitely is. Well, he should be, right? That’s what his genes tell him, what the blood flowing in him says, and the fact that he needs to eat and sleep to stay alive tells him that much; he is human, that is the truth, undeniable. He can function like one, he has friends, he has parents, a good stable family, he can pass his exams with good marks, excellent if he really puts his mind to it. 

But Yeosang doesn’t feel like he is one.

He also doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere. Not there amongst the temporary friends who don’t feel genuine, not there getting praises from his teachers for his excellent project, not here in the quiet park hidden amongst the flashing lights, not here under the dim streetlights accompanying him as he walks a lonely path back to his house with his shadow. 

Not under this particular night sky.

Not here in this peaceful and supposedly good life.

Yeosang lifts his head, peering up at the night sky. It’s starless.

( _In the sky, the stars are shining brightly, as if they are reaching out to him, yelling for him_.)

Whenever he opens up about this feeling, this void in him, showing that part of him which is a complete opposite to the shy yet funny person he always presents to others, everyone tells him he’s just imagining it, some tells him there’s nothing for him to be sad about; he apparently ‘has it all’, so what more could he want, what more _does_ he want?

Yeosang wants to tell them he doesn’t know why he’s this way either, and he wants to yell that he doesn’t feel _sad_ , it’s not sadness gnawing at him, it’s not sadness making him stare up at the ceiling at ungodly hours until his eyes finally fall close. 

It’s an emptiness, a void in him, growing bigger as time passes. It’s an unrest, an agitation, something nagging him that no, this is not where he should be. No matter what he does to try and fill it - be it starting a new hobby, or making a new friend, or stepping out of his comfort zone, or being another him so malicious he doesn’t recognize and regret - the void is persistent, yelling at him that this is all _wrong,_ that this isn’t where he should be, that there’s something which should be there, but he can’t figure out _what_.

Luna is staring down at him, behind the clouds, and Yeosang finds himself squinting at her, like she has answers for him. The Moon is familiar, but not in the way that he sees it everyday, it just feels right to be like this, staring up at the Moon, the only source of light in the middle of a dark night. Something is still missing in this particular scene, just like a big part of Yeosang, but he doesn’t even know where he might’ve dropped it, where or when it went missing. 

_‘Look up at the stars, Yeosang,’_ the all too familiar words echo in his mind, the adults love to say that when he tells them he feels like he has lost something, like he is missing an important piece of him, they love to tell him that when they try to ‘discuss’ this problem of his, which usually just ends in a one-sided talk - scolding - which he willingly forgets the morning after.

He doesn’t get it. Yeosang doesn’t get it, how can he look up at the stars when they are all hidden away from him? He spent countless nights looking up, searching the stars, but there is nothing there twinkling back at him. Only the Moon and her eerie glow.

( _The stars are screaming now, if one sat in a dark room, looked out the window and listened well, they could hear the ancient celestial bodies calling out desperately, ‘Yeosang, we are here! Yeosang, look at us! We are here, we have not abandoned you!’, but the one they want to reach doesn’t hear them, nor does he see them. It is pointless_.)

Was he abandoned? Or did he abandon something?

The only thing that Yeosang knows is that the void in him is still there, and he must try to fill it, even if he doesn’t know how.

Yeosang looks back down onto the ground, he should at least watch where he’s going, but part of him tells him to just start running without care for his surroundings; just to feel the thrill of adrenaline coursing through his veins, not knowing what’s next that he will face.

Yeosang succumbs and he starts to run. To where, he doesn’t know.

The sound of his blood rushing in his ears as he picks up speed is similar to the sound of the wild waves he keeps hearing in his dreams, he finds, and something clicks there.

( _Faintly, Yeosang hears a voice call from the skies, 'open your eyes'_.)

Is this his Answer?

  
  


2\. **Mingi**

From his childhood till now, Mingi doesn’t get many of the things he wants. There’s no complex reason to it, it’s just because he isn’t well-off like the other kids his age, it’s because he was born into a lower class family in the society. He has to latch onto others around him who are willing to share resources with him just to make it through life, he has to bow his head so they’ll find him worthy of being helped, and he has to shove his wants down, because his family simply cannot afford it, and Mingi doesn’t want to put his parents through unnecessary burden for selfish desires he doesn’t have the right to have.

Mingi had dreams, of course, he did. Who didn't? No one starts out wanting nothing. Even a newborn infant wants love and a full stomach.

He had tried to demand, tried to beg, and there are nights he spends crying into his pillow and throwing tantrums, shouting at God, questioning why he was born into this kind of life, questioning whether God loves him or not. He yells and shouts, wails and cries, demanding answers, so many times the Moon witnessed him do so. But each time, there is only silence, and nothing changes the next day - he still has to wake up and go through the same thing, again and again.

So Mingi becomes indifferent to it, and one by one, he allows his dreams to wither away, he allows the spark in him to flicker out and die, he lets himself lose his zest for life; things precious to him, become nothing eventually because there’s no space for dreams and little joys in such a fast-paced and cruel world, there’s no room for such abstract things like desire and wishes, all his time is poured into juggling between work and studies, hoping to somehow lighten his parents’ burden.

And eventually, the fire in him does die, and he no longer smiles. When someone asks him what he likes, he gives them a half-hearted smile and tells them he likes ‘pretty much anything’ or that he is ‘not sure’. He doesn’t tell them that he hates thunders, that he prefers pastel over darker colours, that he prefers quiet over noise; because all that will just make him seem high-maintenance, something he can’t afford to be. 

When Hongjoong comes along though, crashing into his life with the force of an unstoppable hurricane, Mingi finds himself actually _missing_ having dreams and desires outside his basic needs. It was a summer day, a rare one where he isn’t working a part time job, and he was laying down on Hongjoong’s floor, listening to a band they both like - well, Hongjoong introduced them to Mingi and Mingi, who wants this new friend to see him worthy of help and love, as usual, just went with it and found himself actually liking the music - that he found himself dreaming to make music and perform, with the older boy right by his side.

He had sat up abruptly, startled by the thought he managed to catch, eyes wide, as Hongjoong reached over and paused the music, concern evident in his gentle dark brown eyes.

_“What’s wrong, Mingi?”_

Mingi had forced a smile, there's no way he can show such vulnerability, _“Nothing, hyung.”_

When Mingi went home that night, he barely ate dinner and locked himself in his room, staring at the little mirror on the wall with the peeling paint. 

"You don't dream, Song Mingi, you _can't_ ," he whispered to himself over and over again as night fell outside. "You can't afford that."

But if only he could afford to chase it, is there a universe out there where his circumstances are different, where he can actually go after his dream and it becomes reality, not just something he imagines doing?

When Mingi closed his eyes that night, crying himself to sleep, he dreamt of shining lights, dreamt that he was dancing to music booming from a stadium's speakers, standing on a stage. Hongjoong was there, with six other boys with blurred faces. 

( _But even without seeing their true faces, Mingi felt the happiness radiating from them, seeping into him, as he felt a grin make its way onto his face_.)

_A dream, indeed_ , Mingi thinks when he awakes the next morning, _nothing more than a dream._

Then, he starts dreaming again, more often than before. He finds himself in various worlds, like a world where he becomes an idol, a world where he becomes a famous mathematician, he experiences various worlds, each time he falls asleep. Mingi decides he likes sleeping now, even if it's a nap, because he gets to escape from his harsh reality. 

But then, he starts dreaming of a world where he is a pirate of sorts, with a crew of seven other boys. One of them looks horrifyingly familiar, despite the lack of a proper face whenever he turns and faces Mingi. They are in search of a Treasure, but Mingi has yet to know what the Treasure the Captain keeps talking about really is. All he knows is that, a treasure is something valuable, and valuable means it's worth a lot of money, and money will help his situation, so he's in.

Mingi dreams of fragments of this world, again and again, and each time, he wakes up feeling exhausted and more confused, and despite how these dreams cause his mood to plummet, Mingi finds himself wanting to go back to sleep immediately to get another puzzle piece so he can see the picture the puzzle makes. Frequently his mind wanders to what the big picture might really be, distracting him from his reality, as Mingi wonders why the dreams feel like another memory to him, familiar, but he can't quite put his finger on why it is so. 

His parents tell him he's worrying them, and they urge Mingi to tell them what's bothering him. The boy puts on a smile and waves them off. 

He's not going crazy. He’s just on the path to discovering something he feels is important.

( _Little did he know, he was retrieving what he had forgotten, dusting off a long abandoned part of himself_.)

Mingi tells himself that he isn’t going crazy, when he almost completes the puzzle and the blurred faces become clearer. 

_I'm not crazy_ , is what Mingi mutters to himself as he stays up sketching the faces every night as each of them is revealed to him one by one.

He's not going crazy, he tells himself, _I’m not going crazy,_ even if the last face - the Captain's - turns out to be a perfect copy of Hongjoong’s. 

His imagination is just going wild, definitely, with the stress and pressure of a troublesome life. The six other boys must all just be some strangers he met on the streets, that's why they seem familiar, that's why they are in his dreams. 

(However, Mingi cannot figure out why he misses them, and why they feel like a home he never had, a home he actually belongs to, even though he's never been. Strangers in dreams are common, but not strangers you feel strong connections to and desire to return to.)

He goes to Hongjoong, one day, when it all just gets too much and he feels like he’s going to suffocate and drown in it if he didn’t tell someone about it.

“Mingi,” Hongjoong says, looking at him. Mingi suddenly notices the eyebags under his eyes now, _had they always been that dark?_ , and his tone is tired. Anxiety builds up in Mingi; is Hongjoong tired of him now? What will he do next?

“Mingi,” Hongjoong calls gently, “hey. I’m not mad at you, Mingi, don’t worry. Take a deep breath.”

Mingi does as told, and nods when Hongjoong asks if he feels better. 

( _It’s a white lie. Mingi’s fine with telling white lies, they always get him far, with less guilt compared to a true lie, so he prefers them._ )

Hongjoong leans back onto the chair at his study desk, and Mingi notices how his shoulders slump with invisible burden. 

“Hyung, are you okay?” Mingi asks timidly. How did he not notice how troubled Hongjoong was? He had always been good at noticing things like that, he trained himself to, so that he knew what to say and how to act to avoid them blowing up on him and discarding him.

Hongjoong closes his eyes, then opens them and holds Mingi’s gaze, like he’s searching for something. 

“Don’t lie to me here,” Hongjoong starts again, and leans forward, “have you seen the man with the black fedora?”

“What?”

_No,_ was Mingi’s first answer he wanted to say, but he pauses and makes a quick recollection of his dreams. 

He has seen him. An anachronism, a brick out of place. Always lurking in the backgrounds, like a shadow, unmoving and so quiet he sometimes blends right into his surroundings. His gaze makes Mingi shudder in fear every time he meets it, makes his heartbeat speed up so much it makes the boy stumble. 

“I have,” Mingi whispers out his answer, and he sees Hongjoong’s shoulders tense.

Hongjoong lets out a humorless laugh, different than his usual boisterous ones, “I guess we’re really in this together, then.”

Mingi tilts his head, “what?”

The older boy wipes his face with one hand, and sighs deeply. “It’s a long story, Mingi.”

Mingi takes a pillow from Hongjoong’s bed he is sitting on, and hugs it, getting comfy, “well, I got time.”

Hongjoong’s smile is gentle and the warmth is still there, but his eyes are clouded over with emotions Mingi can’t figure out, but Mingi knows they aren’t positive. The older boy still looks weighed down, and like this, he looks older and more experienced, like he’s seen a lot. 

Mingi finds himself thinking that Hongjoong is starting to look like the weary captain in his dreams.

“Well,” Hongjoong adjusts his position, also getting comfortable, “I’ll tell you everything. Will you listen to me?”

“Yeah, I will.”

“Promise you won’t run halfway through?” Hongjoong lifts a hand, his pinky outstretched.

Mingi nods, intertwining their pinky fingers, and Hongjoong smiles softly.

Mingi finds himself finally knowing how to describe Hongjoong’s gaze.

It is haunted.

  
  


3\. **Hongjoong**

The dreams started maybe two months back, some time after Hongjoong managed to befriend Mingi. The boy had always looked empty, despite his grins and his jokes. That’s common, in this kind of world, Hongjoong has seen many people lose the pep in their step over time and be the same monochrome colour as everyone else in the grim world. 

And usually, Hongjoong steers clear of people like that, because he desires to not let the world get him down, he desires to be different and be a bright light amongst the diminished, dead stars. Why waste his time on people who’d most likely look at his ideas in disdain?

But for some reason, a voice in him told Hongjoong to go to Mingi, and well, Hongjoong had always been one of impulse, so he did. He struck a conversation with Mingi, and eventually found another side of Mingi other than those tired eyes and nihilistic jokes, a side which shines through during brief moments; like when Hongjoong won him a plushie of a cartoon character they like and his eyes shone with admiration, and when Hongjoong introduced him to a new band and his genuine smile revealed that the music resonates with him.

The boy with twinkling eyes and excitement for the next day Mingi always hid away deep within him. 

And it was then, a month or so after knowing Mingi, that Hongjoong started dreaming of leading a crew of rowdy boys around his age. Eight of them, including him, on a pirate ship, riding the sapphire waves of a vast ocean. Sometimes, he dreamed of watching the Moon during a calm night on the sea, sometimes, he dreamed of studying a tattered, old map and staring at a compass he knows is dear to his dream self, while chatting absentmindedly with someone else.

Other times, he dreamed of chaos and danger, thrusting a cutlass through someone’s chest cutting enemies down, and seeing his boys drenched in blood and sweat, hearing the loud clangs of metal clashing against metal, accompanied by battle cries and death rattles. Hongjoong hated those dreams, because they always jerked him awake, chest heaving up and down, as he tried to calm down his pounding heart and remind himself he’s back in his bed, on the familiar soft sheets, and not on a deck he’s never stepped onto, but is familiar with given how many times it is the setting of his dreams, fighting for his life under Luna’s watchful eye. 

And then, he started noticing how the formerly blurred faces of his crew members slowly become clearer, and he can register them properly, first, their mouths, then noses, then eyes. And Hongjoong tried his best not to freak out when he saw that the navigator in his little crew was Song Mingi, his good friend, he tried to act like usual when he met the other the next day.

Then only did he start to really question and wonder what was going on, and what the dreams meant. Who are these boys in his dreams? He tried to talk in the dreams when he got them, and found out their names, one by one - Seonghwa, Yunho, Yeosang, San, Wooyoung and Jongho. The names ring a bell, but too distant and far away for him to figure out where he’s heard them before, other than his dreams.

But Hongjoong is not someone who is easily defeated, so he set out to seek them. Starting from his schoolmates, then moving on to the people in town, the old women who dote on him when he goes out for groceries, the old men he usually chats with when he passes by them on weekend mornings as they go on a jog. He found out about some of them; how there’s someone named Jongho who’s good at singing and comes busking with some friends downtown, how the rival school’s top student is named Yeosang, a boy with a birthmark on his left eye, similar to the Yeosang in his dreams, and that there was a boy named San who lived in this town some years ago, rumored to be returning soon, due to how he always moves around.

Other than that, Hongjoong didn’t really discover much else.

That was when the man with the black fedora paid him a visit, on a dark, stormy night. 

Hongjoong had fallen asleep, hoping he’d dream of his pirate crew again, so he could gather more hints about their real-life counterparts. Hongjoong has no idea why he decided to start searching for them, but the feeling in his guts told him it’s the right thing to do (a famous author once said that ‘the mind may err, but never the blood’) and now that he was in this, he wanted to see this through. 

But instead, he found himself standing under a starry night, with sand crunching beneath his boots, hair blowing in the wind, face to face with a man clad in black, a black hat sitting atop his head, and a mask of the same colour covering the lower half of his face.

The man handed him an hourglass with the sand flowing from bottom to top, and Hongjoong hesitantly accepted it.

_“It’s not the reality that makes you lose your dream; it is your decision,”_ the man’s words echo in the surroundings around them, _“there are countless dimensions in the world, so seek your truth, Hongjoong. Will you let it end this way?”_

His eyes showed Hongjoong many things, but the poor boy cannot understand any of it; and because it is human nature to be scared of what they cannot understand, Hongjoong found himself terrified by the man.

When Hongjoong opened his eyes, panting heavily with his heartbeat racing, he was back on the couch in his living room he had dropped onto unceremoniously earlier before dozing off, like always after a rough night of studying, and the rain poured outside, heavy and strong, pelting relentlessly against the window panes. 

The man with the black fedora wasn’t there anymore, and Hongjoong managed to let out a relieved breath when he realized that man was only in his dreams. He rubbed his eyes, and his breath hitched as he caught a soft glow from the table by the sofa he laid on.

An hourglass stood unmoving amongst the scattered papers and stationery on the table. Hongjoong held his breath as the sand began to flow.

It flowed from bottom to top.

  
  


4\. **The Man With The Black Fedora**

He stares off to the distance. The wind blows harshly, the desert is in one of its moods again, raging and howling aggressively, but he stands still. He is immovable, he does not move unless he wishes to, and he is not moved unless he allows himself to be moved.

The man has seen many things, from utmost joy to crushing despair, he has been through it all. Now, he is indifferent to it all, he isn’t sure how long he has lived anymore, but that doesn’t matter when he is still alive and breathing, somehow. The hourglass is no longer in his hand, and it feels lighter now without the weight, but it feels _wrong._

Well, he had gone down many wrong paths, and he’s still here, so he decides he’ll do fine eventually without the weight of the hourglass grounding him. Just like how he learned to keep going even when his friends fell one by one, just like how he learned to live with the fact that he has fallen from grace a long time ago, just like how he learned to accept his fate, accept this outcome of his actions even though it’s not the one that he wanted.

He lifts his head up again to the starry sky, expression unchanging, eyes unreadable. The Moon stares back at him, cold as ever, surrounded by the stars. Next, he would have to give the leader the Map, and the Compass. Now, he has to wait for the right time to do so.

He wonders if this time will work.

Will this version of them reach the Treasure together without failing?

For a moment, there is a twinge of hope in his empty chest, for this new version of them.

( _The Treasure is waiting_.)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope that was okay <3 Do leave some thoughts about the story, and I hope you liked it! Kudo's and comments are appreciated <3


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